Abstract
The relation between language change and the process of language evolution is controversial in current linguistic theory. Some authors believe that the two processes are completely unrelated, while for others the evolution of language is (at least in part) a consequence of linguistic changes. Both models imply a very different assessment of what is changing when languages themselves change. I present an explicit model of what changes when languages change, and I show that the claim that language change is a crucial factor in explaining the evolution of human language, although suggestive and very popular, faces problems of a theoretical and empirical nature.
Highlights
The evolution of “language evolution” Since Charles Darwin pointed out that “the formation of different languages and of distinct species [...] are curiously parallel” (Darwin 1871; apud Alter 1999: 100), the comparison between languages and species has enjoyed a remarkable development
It is no coincidence that in our illustrative example of reanalysis, the source of abduction is precisely a sound sequence which is ambiguous between two possible syntactic and morphological analyses. Note that this model of language change based on a single mechanism, reanalysis, provides a prediction that fits perfectly with the vision of linguistic change we have made, according to which linguistic changes are severely restricted by the historically invariant part of the language faculty and cannot create anything new beyond modifying the exponents inventoried in the lexical interface characteristic of each I-language
The diversity of languages is a fact of transcendental importance for human beings, but it is not in itself the goal or purpose of any process. It is a collateral effect of the mechanism of linguistic transmission across generations, a mechanism that is incapable of preventing the processes of reanalysis that, as we have argued, underlie all linguistic changes
Summary
The evolution (or diachrony) of “language evolution” Since Charles Darwin pointed out that “the formation of different languages and of distinct species [...] are curiously parallel” (Darwin 1871; apud Alter 1999: 100), the comparison between languages and species (and between historical linguistics and evolutionary theory) has enjoyed a remarkable development (see Lass 1997; Croft 2000; Mendívil-Giró 2006). The models represented by Kirby (1998; 2000; 2002) and Heine & Kuteva (2007) belong to different fields and use different methodologies, they come together (see Hurford 2003) to propose an alternative to the biological model of language evolution and share the hallmark of the cultural model: that the “evolution” (=change) of languages is necessary and sufficient to explain the origin of modern Human language from ancestral states Another feature common to both traditions is the assumption that language is a communication system, and not a knowledge system used for communication.
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